Obidos and Peniche

At this stage on our trip I stopped talking notes. These last three days were so jam-packed full of adventure that there was little down time for writing and musing and watching Brett sleep even though he'll claim he was reading.

We left Porto after breakfast and drove south to a town called Obidos. We'd asked many people on this trip which towns were worth stopping in and Obidos came up often. It was chilly and rainy on this day but we made the best of it. We parked Martin in an empty parking lot outside of the walled city and we trudged in on foot. It was here, in an empty hotel restaurant that Brett and I had one of the best meals of the trip. We began to wonder if Portuguese people in small towns partake in the Spanish siesta rituals as we had a really hard time finding a place to have lunch. We gave up hope on finding something especially authentic and instead we slid into the one hotel around and asked if they were serving lunch.

"Yes. Of course." the maitre'd said as though it should have been obvious. We were the only three people standing in a large turquoise dining room decorated with seahorses and sandollars. He sat us by a window and gave us big wooden menus. We never saw any other staff members or hearty eaters. He was our host, server, and bus boy and even though we heard a few clangs coming from behind a wall, we never saw any other humans in this entire hotel. Nevertheless, our food was delicious and the one-man-band server was delighted by our enthusiasm. I think he was a little sad to see us go.

Obidos is an adorable little town and well worth a wander through. We walked along the medieval wall, slipping on stones, hopping giant puddles, and peering into people's backyards. It was a pretty neat day.

Here I was fixing' to bust out some dance moves.

We found our Aribnb in another tiny town and this was the coldest building I've ever spent the night in. It's that whole stone-country thing. It was a cute little house with cutest, tiniest functional sofa I've had the pleasure of sitting upon. But it had no heat. It had this ceramic plate, about the size of a big cutting board, and that's what you plugged into the wall to generate heat. It was confusing and ineffective. We folded ourselves up onto the tiny couch and piled on every blanket we could find and we just sat awhile, just trying to be warm. Eventually we left for dinner and we found a wonderful steakhouse, fit for one-hundred guests. We were the only patrons and the waitstaff had nothing else to do besides watch us eat. You could have heard a pin drop in there. Brett and I whispered our conversation but the waiters still came around to practice their English and ask us what on earth we were doing there.

Back at the house, we put all of the couch blankets onto the bed and wheeled the ceramic plate into the room and we curled up in there and braced for the coldest night ever. Just as I was sinking into the lukewarm trough created by my own minimal body-heat, a high-pitched, shrill barking sound emanated from beneath our bedroom window. It sounded like a Chihuahua. I let out a hateful chuckle. A yipping step-on dog is just what this night needed.
"He'll quit in a minute." Brett said, pressing his cold toes into my calves. We waited one minute. The yipping dog incited a barking dog which set off a howler down the street. Within three minutes there was a loud chorus of bays illuminating the night with song. I thought it was hilarious. Brett was surprisingly annoyed and equally irritated by my amusement. This is unlike him so my amusement quickly turned into the kind you'd have at school, where something would really tickle you but you knew you would get trouble if the teacher caught you laughing. I assured grumpy Brett that this wouldn't go on much longer and as I said this, a new voice joined in. We waited ten minutes for the symphony of bellows to croon their final sonata. While the howling hound was clearly walking down the street, growing dim as he sang, the yippers were steadily performing beneath our window. Brett let out a rant about retarded inbred dogs and slammed his head down into a pillow and pulled a blanket up over his face.
I laid there delighted and horrified. Oh how I wanted to laugh but oh how few times I've seen Brett truly angry. He's always so calm and patient, and knowing how much he adores dogs, it all just seemed like something he should find funny, like his simple wife did. The hound made his way back to the buskers beneath our window and let out a baritone C. Brett sat up, spun to face the window and peered down the street in both directions.
"How come no one is taking care of this? Who lets their dog make this much noise this late at night?"
I didn't respond. It was a valid question. We were one in a row of houses so surely someone else was aware of the noise.
"I'm going to yell at them." Brett said, fiddling with the latch on the window.
"They don't speak English." I retorted.
"But if I make enough noise, maybe a person will come out to see what the commotion is about. I'm going out there!" and he flipped the pile of blankets off to one side and felt around in the dark for his shoes.
"Don't go out there, Brett. You might get shot!"
"Shot?"
"Yeah. Shot!"
"I'm not going to get shot. I'll just run off the dogs."
"But Brett! What if it's tradition for everyone to fall asleep to the racket. You'll be an eerily tall white guy messing up the rituals. Like the pilgrims. Do you want everyone around to know we're Americans? ...just walking on up in here making things how we like them."
"I assure you no one falls asleep to this every night."

We drifted off to the soothing sounds of the Flea Bag Band and we did not speak of Brett's outburst the next morning. We simply packed up our crap, unplugged the fake heater, and made our way down the stairs to Martin. When we got outside, there was a little old lady wiping the dew off of Martin with a roll of paper towels. She was excited to see us. Our "host" must have told her we were on our honeymoon and she held onto my hands and said Portuguese things to me with a big smile on her face. I thanked her for drying the car and spoke back to her in English just so she would think I was trying to communicate. Whoever she was, she patted Martin dry and then waved us off as we pulled out into the road and I think about her on occasion, her urge to do something sweet for two traveling strangers. I like that very much.

We set off for Peniche, the other "hot spot" to visit. Even though it was about 10:30 when we arrived looking for breakfast, nothing in town was open. In fact, it had a deserted quality about it, like Myrtle Beach in the winter time. There were a few humans milling around but they seemed to be doing nothing and we followed a few, in search of food of course, but none of our leads panned out. We tried to eat at a busy hotel breakfast bar but they wouldn't let us in because we weren't staying there. So we watched everyone else eat through the large glass windows and once our bellies started to gurgle, we hopped back into Martin and drove until we found a tiny bakery full of locals.
Again, we didn't know what any of the food was so we ordered by pointing at things. We had espresso and ham and cheese croissants, and little donut-looking pastries and then an extra coffee to-go.  We sat and we ate, happily chatting about the sunny day ahead. When we got up to pay, we were informed that they only took cash and the Big Guy and I were fresh out. We'd been using our cards for most things and just used up the last of our cash because we felt like we didn't need it.
"Cash only." the bakery girl repeated and before any true discussion, Brett went out in search of an ATM and left me in the bakery as collateral.

We took Martin out to the shore and took in the wild, Portuguese coastline.

Here I am, posing with Martin.

For our last night, we drove back into Lisbon, returned Martin, and took an uber to the final and most exciting AirBnb of our trip. It was just a cool old building in a neat part of town. We walked back to Fabrica Cafe and the waitstaff were happy to see us. A whole week had passed by now. We hung out with our coffee and snacks and for supper, we elected to go back to the clown school. We sat on Bozo's terrace and had a final, delicious Portuguese meal and toasted to the good times ahead.

And then we got into a polite feud at the Newark airport during our seven hour layover on the way home, but I guess that's marriage.

Porto

Porto was my favorite. We arrived after dark, checked into our Airbnb and took a little wifi break to update our families and Google any notable dinner spots nearby. We wound up just wandering through the chilly nighttime air and decided on a fancy seafood restaurant. I didn’t make note of this in my Captain's Log but thinking back about it now, I remember feeling grubby and gross and like everyone in the restaurant could tell I’d hiked up a mountain that morning and then sat three hours for a cross-country road trip and hadn’t yet showered the day off. In addition to me being gross, we ordered a seafood sampler platter and other than some articles being unrecognizable and needing to be pried out of creepy spaces, my stomach suddenly was repulsed by seafood and I couldn’t eat a thing. Take a moment to Google Goose barnacles and then imagine that you have to pinch and rip that elephant skin off to pull out a large booger-like substance and that’s what you’re supposed to eat. This was the first real occasion in my life where mental factors kept me from eating.

There were also shrimp and clams on our platter, which I eat readily here at home, but I was so repulsed by the booger barnacles that I couldn’t eat those either. I ate the starter bread for supper and in Portugal, they bring bread and olives to you at every restaurant, to temp you. If you eat them, you are charged an additional fee. I told this to Brett ahead of time, but he still ate the bread and olives everywhere we went. Brett understood my sudden heebeegeebees about the elephant-leg boogers so he polished off the platter all by himself and then we walked home in the rain. 

The next day was a beautiful warm day and we did lots of touristy things. First we climbed to the top of a giant tower for a panoramic view of Porto. You had to climb a seemingly never-ending and especially narrow spiral-staircase to get to the top and when you encountered other tourists going up or down, you kind of had to hug them and spin to switch places but it was well worth the view. 

Then we stopped by the Livaria Lello, possibly the coolest bookstore ever… except that it was extremely crowded and because it was so neat in there, everyone was taking selfies and the obvliouslness to their surroundings was at an enraging high. The center of the space had an ornate staircase where most pictures were being taken and people would hold up traffic and make people wait to have their photos made. It was the only staircase and I couldn’t imagine stopping everyone in the shop so I could take a photo of myself. When we were trying to leave, we couldn’t get down the stairs and I got angrier and angrier by the second. Finally I pushed through, determined to get out and I found that no one could go down the stairs because a girl was laying on her side, posing on the landing and wanted a shot with no other humans in it. Can you imagine striking a swimsuit pose, on your belly in a public shop, with about 60 people staring and waiting for you? Brett and I became irritable separately and then had to work together to find lunch. That was the hardest half-hour of our whole trip.

A Google image of the bookstore.

A selection of Porto notes from the Captain's log:

-      We both might be cranky today but were too excited to tell.

-      Everything is made of cold stone so our feet hurt and we're always cold. Brett’s been soaking his feet in various sinks.

-      Porto has lots of funky artsy people and friendly street cats. A homeless woman lives on our street and yells at us for cigarettes and wine even though she has both in each hand.

-      Brett continues to eat the non-complimentary bread.

On our third day in town, we’d signed up for a coffee tasting. We took Martin over to the west bank of town and this is where we met Carlos, a Portuguese Jeff Goldblum with a fondness for precision and run-on sentences. Carlos opened his coffee shop after he retired from a long career as a civil engineer. I thought he looked like he was cast for this job; a coffee roaster in a commercial selling credit card software to small business owners. Carlos is a handsome man; silver hair, weathered hands, glasses resting on his nose and a thick leather apron tied around his waist. His shop was spotless and organized and void of any color except for his collection of espresso cups. It was that stark, Scandinavian décor that’s so trendy right now in so many places, but not in Portugal. The Portuguese like warmth and comfort and a homey clutter. Carlos, a self-proclaimed coffee snob, admitted that he decorated the shop this way to keep out the kinds of people he doesn’t want in his coffee shop – folks looking to curl up awhile with a warm beverage. “Dese drinks with-eh syrups and wheeped cream…” he said, “Zis is not coffee.”

We were the only two who had signed up for the tasting that day so we got the whole shop to ourselves and Carlos had set out little cookies at our perfectly aligned place-settings that were framed by wooded slabs he would later set with warm brews. We learned many things on this day and in a strange turn of events, I found it all extremely fascinating. We went into this more as something for Brett to enjoy but I walked out of there bouncing with excitement and talking a mile a minute – I’m sure it had nothing to do with all the coffee. I had no idea the lengths people go to grow, market, and then acquire coffee beans. Carlos showed us the difference between high quality green coffee beans and ones that would go on to become “somsing like-eh, Folgers.” Of these lackluster beans Carlos just said, “Dis coffee has problems.”

We got a big kick out of Carlos and though we couldn’t acknowledge anything at the time, afterwards at lunch, we discussed the many nuances of Carlos and were very happy to find that we had noticed many of the same subtle but priceless Carlos moments; the adorable way he wiggled his bean grinder or the moment he broke his very tight, calculated movements with a lackadaisical slap to his French press. I appreciate that Brett notices these things. One time Brett’s boss walked around all day having missed a belt loop and Brett thought it was adorable. I thought Brett thinking it was adorable was adorable. 

We hung out with Carlos for three hours, had some lunch and by the afternoon, our coffee tasting had blended with last night’s Indian supper and suddenly there was lots of gurgling going on in our bellies. When we tell people we went to Portugal for our honeymoon, they all say, “Oh wow, how romantic!” but what I think about is this day; this day of ethnic spices and fibrous beans and the farty time we spent together blaming the other, and the time we spent apart “working things out.” We had a few farty days in Porto and we used bathrooms all over town. We dubbed the whole thing “The Porto Potty Experience.”  

Like in Lisbon, we spent most of our time here eating and searching out other places to eat for the next time we got hungry. We hiked around and stuck our heads in many different churches, found a favorite coffee shop above a shoe store, tried some Portuguese wine (it all tastes like wine), and met an American girl named Gita who was traveling alone, so we all had dinner together one night. We climbed a bridge that Brett had his eye on the whole time we were in town and on our last day, a championship soccer game was being played in town so the whole city filled up with people in bright blue. People came in from out of the country and starting drinking at breakfast. We were out walking along the water and came upon a sea of drunken jersey-clad men, shouting and singing, and laughing. It was only 11:30.

 Our only photo together on our honeymoon. It is less than ideal.

The last three days of our trip were planned as we went. We studied a map and found two more towns to visit so we booked some last minute AirBnb's, loaded up Martin, and headed back south towards the sunshine. 

Sintra

The drive made us feel capable and free. Though I initially worried about the recklessness of European driving, Brett was a calm international-driver who took multi-laned roundabouts with the finesse of a leaping ballerina. Often I gasped or held my breath and pointed things out to Brett even though he was well aware of his surroundings. I annoyed myself with my concern and quickly decided that even if we crashed, I wasn’t going to outright blame Brett (who needs it?) so I may as well just enjoy the scary ride and if we go out in fiery honeymoon blaze, so be it. 

Our first stop was Sintra, an old Moorish hangout for royal folks looking to escape the bustle of Lisbon. We arrived on a rainy weekend so I’ll encourage you to “Google it” to see what it looks like on a sunny day. You know how I love colors. 
The rain was too much on this day, so we opted for a coffee shop lounge followed by an extended lunch break before we scuffled back to Martin and drove slightly out of town to our AirBnb. Here’s where things get juicy. Our house for the night was in a tiny town, thirty minutes from any larger towns, and it was located right off the one main street but tucked back through an alley. We couldn’t find it. So we sat in car as rain pop pop popped on the roof. 

Brett tried to call our “host” but no one spoke English. Twenty minutes past our check-in time, a tiny old lady with an equally small umbrella came shuffling out of this mist, waving and talking and smiling at us. She came right over to the passenger side, opened my door, yanked me out and gave me a long, wiggly hug. She was giggle-talking in Portuguese the whole time. Boy was she excited to see us. She grabbed my purse and my arm and held her tiny umbrella over my head and led me around, gathering more of our things as Brett unpacked the car. Her giggling made me giggle and the two of us stood in the rain laughing at each other. Once Brett got our suitcases, the old lady grabbed onto my left butt cheek and pulled me down the ally to our house. She had her other arm wrapped around Brett’s body and insisted we both squish under the tiny umbrella but she wouldn’t let go of us, so we moved in a mob, tripping over each other while rained dribbled down the sides of the umbrella into our coats and hair. She was still talking awfully fast and laughing at things and only letting go of my butt to pat my arm like a happy Mom does when her kid comes home for the weekend. Then she’d grab hold again and pull me wherever she wanted us to go. I remember wishing she would switch to the other butt cheek to give the first one a break.

Once inside, she was a little Portuguese tornado. She blew through the house pointing out different things, talking about the house, making us feel the difference between the hot and cold water. She opened drawers and turned on lights and showed us where the extra blankets were, still grabbing on to various body parts to pull us around with her. She’d hustle us along so close together that we’d step on each others feet or whack others with your elbows. If you tried to put some distance between yourself and the herd, she’d come grab you and pull you back in, so we moved through the house in a triangular hug.

But then she needed to tell us something important and the language barrier finally became a problem. She talked and pointed at the ceiling. She handed me a remote to the air conditioning and looked worried as she explained things. Then she got a bright idea and called her English speaking son who said something about the heat not working.  She beamed at me while I spoke to him. Then she’d say something to Brett who’d smile at her and she’d clap her hands together and hold them under her chin. 

When I hung up with the son, I heard the lady say, “I’m sorry, I only speak Portuguese and French.” 
She said that in Portuguese so I don’t know how I understood her but I lit up and said, “Je parle le francias!” and the little lady managed to get even more excited and we got the whole tour again but in French. I didn’t have to say much at all because she was rapid firing every thought she was having but it was quite exciting to finally use something I learned in school. Is this what that’s like?

After the French tour, she asked about us and I realized all of her giddiness was due to us being on our honeymoon. “Amour! Jeune amour!” she said looking at us. Then she told me all about her grandchildren and Brett managed to ooze out of the room.

Before she left, I asked her if there were any restaurants nearby and she said we absolutely had to go to Don Pablos’. It’s right down the road and we wouldn’t miss it. We all triangle-hugged goodbye and after she left Brett just said, “Woah.”

Brett is too tall for most Portuguese passageways. 

We rode down the dark country road passing what looked like collections of small pueblos every mile or so and occasionally a car lot or a dusty corner store. In the distance was a neon glow and I had a bad feeling that was Don Pablos.

Like a palace in the desert, Don Pablo’s was a beacon of light in the still darkness. We approached a parking lot fit for a hundred cars and still had to park in the back where the street lamps flickered and the staff dumped the boxes and scraps. Looking in from the outside was like peering into a cross-section of an ant bed. It was warm and busy and we questioned whether or not to go in. As it did come highly recommended by our favorite French grandmother and there was likely nowhere else to eat, we went for it, and heads turned as we stepped through the double doors. Mostly people stared at Brett. I was swarthy enough to fit in but they still sent over the one waiter that knew a bit of English and he lead us through the restaurant and sat us at a table between a business dinner and a teenage girls' rowdy birthday party.

Don Pablos’ as it turns out, is a buffet style restaurant, highlighting the many delicacies of Portuguese cuisine. The walls were purple and mounted with large tv screens showing soccer game replays. The large black and while tile floor was fit for a party of what I estimated to be about 200 people. It was garish and loud and busy, and it occurred to me that it was the prefect setting for a panic attack.

To start, there was an 8-foot buffet of salted meats and livestock cheeses. These were not labeled so I reckon even the locals had to guess whether they were working on a chunk of pig or cow.

Then there was the “vat” section, which displayed a half-dozen cauldrons of the more juicy dishes, hence the need to store them in vats. Most of my supper came from the Vat section as it had the few labeled items and one cannot go wrong with beans and rice or lamb stew. The main buffet, that Brett eyeballed at about 18-feet in length, housed everything from vegetables and potatoes to unlabeled fish patties and some poor critter who’s eyes were left intact. There was an additional cured meat and cheese section on this buffet, just in case. Finally, there was a dessert buffet on which I count 27 different cakes and pies surrounded by fruit that no one knew whether or not to eat because it wasn’t on any kind of platter, it was just scattered around between the pies. 

For being a part of a nation so quick to criticize the fat, uncouth, grotesqueness of American culture, this felt an awful lot like the dining room on a Carnival cruise ship. Brett and I fixed modest plates and brought them back to our table, next to a of bunch of young girls dressed like transvestites. Maybe it was because people were staring at him, but Brett wouldn’t let me go to the buffet unaccompanied. I would have laughed at this if I wasn’t enduring a sensory overload. At the time I was grateful for his support. As soon as we finished our tiny supper, our plates were whisked away and a fresh one set down in front of each of us. We were a bit more adventurous on our second round, and for his third act, Brett sampled a sizable selection of cakes and pies.

We left as soon as Brett’s bottomless gut was filled and we drove off into the night, leaving Don Pablo’s neon glow to grow dim in the darkness behind us.

I didn’t sleep well that night. Must have been something I ate.

The next morning, we drove Martin back into Sintra and started our walk up to Pena Palace. Everything we read warned us against driving to the top of the mountain because the roads were narrow and there was nowhere to park. Since we’re young and Brett is healthy, we decided to hike up to the palace. This did prove to be a steeper, longer climb than we expected. Brett scampered up with relative ease, though in my defense, he readily stopped to pretend take in the view with me even though we both knew it was really just a chance to catch our breath. We hiked the arduous trek up a cobblestone path just wide enough for tour buses to squeeze through. We hugged the walls and sucked in our guts as they went by and then we forged on upwards. Our butts burned. Our legs trembled. My heart raced with every strained step. I wondered why we were the only people making the climb. At long last we could see the ticket booth in the distance. Sweat beaded on our brows and our ankles burned with weight. Finally, we came over the crest of the hill to the base of the fort. The first thing we noticed was the sizable parking lot with ample spaces available. 
“Don’t think about it.” Brett said, before I could even get started on my angry rant.

The Palace was very interesting, colors and patterns and all that. For a gal that's wandered many-a ancient home, this one sticks out. Usually I abide by a "seen one, seen 'em all" stance on buildings made out of stone but I'll give this one some distinction. So we looked around a while and then got lost in the enormous gardens.

On our way back to Martin, we stopped at a farmer's market and bought some snacks for our drive to Porto. While we were here, someone’s dog caught a rat scampering through the booths and the scene resulted in shrieks and laughter and the casual cleaning up of rat blood next to the local produce stand. Everyone went back to normal afterwards and again, I thought about how this would never fly in The States. As we pulled out of our parking spot, we discovered that we had parked on church grounds and had been blocking traffic for some kind of ceremony. Old people glared and pointed at us and we had to creep along with the mob of angry Catholics to get back to the highway.